Iorizzo: Game changes may not be for the better

PETE IORIZZO

Published 8:57 pm, Saturday, November 2, 2013

When we were kids, my brother and I used to play the NBA Jam video game. There were no fouls, no free throws and pretty much no defense — just two-on-two games highlighted by quadruple somersault dunks performed by players who could elevate to the arena's roof. Oh, and sometimes the basketball caught fire.

Now, it seems, we want our real sports to look more like Nintendo. Take the NFL. The league started cracking down on the amount of contact defensive backs could have with receivers, and Peyton Manning started piling up touchdowns the way Bo Jackson did in Tecmo Super Bowl.

College basketball has its finger on the trigger button, too. The NCAA has asked officials to crack down on physical play, an effort to infuse more offense into a game that's entered a golden age for defense.

Well, color me skeptical.

It's true that scoring in college basketball has been in decline for more than a decade, and in the 2011-12 season it bottomed out, with Division I teams averaging only 67.5 points per game, the lowest since 1981-82. Halftime point totals that look more like football scores have become commonplace.

But more points doesn't always translate to a better game, especially if we start hearing more of the referees' whistles than we do of the pep bands. Who wants to watch a two-hour free-throw shooting contest?

"I think college basketball is the best game out there," says University at Albany men's basketball coach Will Brown, whose team opens its season Friday at Times Union Center against Siena. "I just hope we're not hitting a panic button here."

Brown's no fan of the new points of emphasis the NCAA has given officials. Referees have been asked to more strictly call hand-checks, the ticky-tack fouls that drive fans and coaches crazy. Also, the NCAA tweaked the block-charge call in favor of the ballhandler, likely making it much more difficult to draw a charge.

Playing tight on the ball and drawing charges used to be called good defense, especially if you're wearing Danes purple. This is the time of year coaches usually delight in telling us how "up-tempo" their teams are going to be, even though most play like Brown's. He says proudly, "We're a half-court team at both ends of the floor." And there's nothing wrong with that, especially when you've won three league championships in the past eight years.

But now there's a movement to make that style as old-fashioned as Converse high-tops.

"What's happened now is too many people are getting caught up in what's appealing to the fan," Brown says. "In football, people want to see touchdowns; in baseball, they want to see home runs; boxing, they want to see knockouts; and basketball, they want to see points on the board."

Maybe so, but despite all the hand-wringing about how ugly the game has become, college basketball hardly seems like it's at a crisis point. Television ratings for last year's Final Four were the highest they've been since 2005. The game must be so ugly that fans can't look away.

Besides, the new enforcement of the rules fails to address the real drivers of the Dead Roundball Era:

• Scouting, thanks to technology, is so advanced that the defense knows almost every play the offense runs.

• Shooting percentages have declined — and not just because players aren't getting good looks. Jump-shooting is a lost art. "You've got to be able to make a 16, 17-foot jump shot and open 3s," Brown says.

• Players are bigger and stronger, and teams full of big, strong players generally employ a more half-court style. Even if fans can't appreciate their slowed-down approach, they'll like the final score. "We like to think" Brown says, "that fans like winning."